Poems (Tree)/When I Am Weary at the Antic Chance
WHEN I am weary at the antic chance,The hobby-horses and the wooden lance,The hope and fear in jugglery, and seeHow starved the juggler, mean and miserly,And life a laboured trick—the years advanceA shrilling chorus in affected danceWith lust of many eyes that watch and winkFixed on them; or a clown in feverish pinkWill draw gross laughter by a hideous prance—Vulgarity and sin and souls askance,Where fiddles squeal and all the follies spin—Till, when the stage is empty, HarlequinThrough curtained silence trips as from a tranceWith blushing flowers for Columbine—Romance.
1917